Entre Les Deux
by Flywoman Returns
Summary: Sam and Adama grieve together in a particular way. Post-3X18 "Maelstrom" remix of "Oublie Tes Erreurs" by leiascully for Remix Madness 2014.


The moment Adama's boots hit the deck, Sam's waiting for him. He watches the man in the flight suit stiffen up from his resigned slump in recognition.

Adama steps forward and strips off his helmet. Sam's fist clenches involuntarily. He wonders whether he's about to break his own long-standing rule and take the first swing at a smaller man.

"Not here," Adama says quietly, barely understandable beneath the rattle and hum of the deckhands descending on the battered ships.

Sam jerks his chin down the corridor toward the head. Adama nods, surprisingly docile. Or maybe not so surprisingly. Sam's never really been able to figure him out.

People stare as they come down the corridor. Behind them, the whispers start. Some crewman sidles through the door as they reach it. He smirks and holds the hatch. There's nobody in the head. Maybe the sight of them coming that way cleared it out; might as well take advantage. Sam spins the lock and rounds on Adama, deliberately towering over him.

"How the frak could you let her fly into that storm?" Sam shouts. He's not a shouter, normally, but right now it feels like if he doesn't force the air out of his lungs, he'll fly apart.

"I don't know if you've noticed, Anders, but nobody really _lets_ Kara Thrace do anything," the shorter man snaps back, then winces.

"Gods damn you," Sam swears. "You lost her."

"She was lost long before you frakking came along with the white-knight act," Adama yells. He rips down the zipper of his smock, shedding it as fast as he can. The underarms of his tanks are stained with sweat.

"Yeah, you're one to frakking talk," Sam shouts back, furious at the little bastard's refusal to take any responsibility for the situation. "All 'shape up, Starbuck, salute me, Starbuck, you better make up for your frakup past, Starbuck, and you can start by frakking me'."

"That wasn't at all how it happened!" Adama shouts, down to tanks and shorts and bare feet. "You shut your godsdamn mouth, Sam. You're talking about things you know nothing about."

"I know enough," Sam says. "More than I'd like to. Drop the good-guy sham, Adama. You're nothing but a cheating little frakker without the strength to hold her here. You were the one pushing her. You're the reason she's dead right now." As he says it, he almost believes it himself, but deep down, he knows that what he really wants is to get a rise out of the other man. To rile him up enough that Sam can retaliate and punish him for being blessed with what Sam could never quite manage to earn.

Sure enough, Adama bellows and launches himself at Sam. They hurtle across the room together, throwing punches, slapping one of the taps on and then off again somehow so that the deck's slippery too with the water draining.

They each land a few good blows. Adama's eye is starting to swell, and he's curling in on himself a little, trying to protect his side where Sam smashed an elbow into his ribs. Sam is panting, and his nose is bleeding from a lucky left cross, but he's not yet ready to let it go. To let her go.

Adama is. He's breathing hard, looking half dead on his feet. He grabs Sam around the waist and holds on, grappling with him - _does he wanna fight or dance,_ Sam wonders - and his chest heaves against Sam's ribs. The blood from Sam's nose mixes with his tears and drips into Adama's hair.

Part of him realizes just how frakking pointless this is. Sam knows he's half out of his mind with grief, stupid and clumsy with it, just longing to down a bottle of ambrosia and hit his rack, or find some unused room where he can sob away his loss, once he gets tanked enough. Instead here he is, dancing with Captain Pansy, reeking and soaked, thinking of how Kara must have pressed her body against this little bastard's the same way. Godsdamn it, she'd married _him_, promised herself in sickness and in health, shared his bed every night, mingled her stale breath with his every morning. And yet Adama was the one she'd loved.

There's no justice in the worlds. Then again, he already knew that.

Something strange is happening as he and Adama sway wearily, still thumping at each other. Their thighs brush. Adama's leg has somehow gotten wedged between his, and Sam can feel him harden, sense him stirring. He pushes in even further, increasing the pressure. Sam groans, responding despite himself. He realizes that the smell of Adama's sweat is familiar, inextricably entwined with Kara's in his mind since that morning when she came to him after lying in Adama's arms all night and asked him to marry her.

The thought should piss him off.

Instead, it excites him.

Adama has the advantage now. He presses even harder against Sam, glancing down, and Sam knows he can't have missed the telltale bulge tenting his own sweats.

"Gonna frak me, Adama?" Sam asks, twisting his mouth into a sneer, trying to hide just how much this is turning him on. "Gonna frak me like you couldn't frak her?"

"You're right," Adama grits out. "She wasn't into that."

Instead of asking how the frak he would know, "You let her _go_," Sam says, and although he means to sound accusing, he can hear the anguish and the terror reverberating in his own voice.

"She said something about destiny," Adama offers, and Sam blinks slowly, recognizing this for what it is, an olive branch, an effort to balm his raw, gaping wounds. "She let herself go. She said to let her go."

But "Frak destiny," Sam says, grinding his teeth, and means it, even as he recognizes that Adama is right: Kara wanted to go. He'd seen it sometimes, that distant expression on her drawn face. He'd shut his own eyes against it, over and over.

"Frak me," Adama says suddenly. "Frak me instead." His upturned face is earnest and anxious all at once, like he's sure that Sam is going to hurt him and just as certain that he deserves it.

If he stopped to think about it, Sam would probably decide that this was a terrible idea.

He doesn't. He pulls off his sweats and shorts with the fluidity of long practice and slings them over a nearby towel rack. Adama braces himself against the wall as Sam strips off Adama's shorts, hangs them next to his own, probes with a couple of fingers to find him tight but willing, and then pushes in slowly. He has no idea whether Adama's done this, or more to the point, had this done to him, before, so he's as gentle as he knows how to be.

It isn't his first time frakking someone he doesn't love. He hasn't done it much since the war started, because a leader needs to keep some distance, and then he found Kara, but he used to do it. It was no big deal, getting together with teammates off the Pyramid court, sometimes roughing up his rivals with no hard feelings afterwards, no pun intended. It didn't really matter what his preferences were. In general for him it's men; he likes strong partners, not having to hold back, not having to worry about whether he's going to hurt someone. But Kara is - was - man enough for him.

He's still not sure about this guy.

Sam's not even sure exactly what emotions he's experiencing right now, if he's being honest with himself. It feels a little like hate, since he wouldn't frak Adama if Kara weren't (he can't think the word) feels a little like love, if only because he's thinking of Kara the whole time, wondering what she saw in this soft boy, half-convinced that if he only gets deep enough, he'll be able to figure it 's ass is so tight at first that frakking him is almost painful, but it's a good kind of pain, and lessens as he relaxes, opening up a little more.

It must be good for Adama too because he's grunting softly, curling his fingers against the tile, every time that Sam thrusts into him. He spreads his hips a little wider and lifts his hips, which also makes it easier for Sam; his thighs had been starting to cramp with the effort of keeping low enough to get the right angle.

He's just decided that Adama has definitely done this before when the smaller man slips slightly and groans, grabbing at the wall for purchase and twisting the tap on as if by accident. Water pours down his back and sprays Sam in the chest, first icy, and then almost scalding. He grimaces and strips off his soaked t-shirt, tossing it behind them.

Steam rises around them, Adama's slippery body sliding against his. Sam's getting close; he abandons gentleness, just letting his body do what it wants. A particularly hard thrust makes Adama grunt and shove his ass back against Sam' hips. Adama'll be sore tomorrow, but by this point Sam doesn't give a frak. He uses his height and weight to bear down, pinning Adama between the wall and the solid mass of his body. He pushes hard again, gets that grunt again, a little sound of surprised pleasure that goes straight to Sam' cock.

"Harder," Adama pants, pushing back against him.

"Thought you wanted me to frak you like I frakked her," Sam gasps between thrusts. "I _loved_ her." Loved, past tense. He shoves Adama up against the wall, almost vicious now.

"She liked it rough," Adama says, and Sam knows that he's not just talking about sex.

"Not all the time," Sam says, and he isn't either. Adama turns his head, and Sam's surprised by the open envy in his eyes.

"Frak you, I loved her too," Adama says. Sam doesn't answer, just keeps moving his hips, adjusting his angle, until Adama's breath hitches, his eyes closing momentarily before locking themselves on Sam's again.

"Yeah, well, it didn't make a godsdamn bit of difference in the end," Sam says, and thrusts even harder. He can tell that Adama is close; his knees are visibly trembling, and when Sam gets a hand down to cup Adama's balls, the kid nearly jumps out of his skin. But Sam's other hand is on Adama's thigh, pulling him back, holding him steady, his fingers digging into Adama's flesh for purchase. He can feel himself starting to shiver as he approaches the edge.

He thinks of Kara, of the way she bit her lip when she was close, the way she closed her eyes and then opened them again just when he most needed to see her. Gods, he loved her, he loved her; it's an injustice of incredible magnitude for all four of them, him and her and Adama and Dee, the way it all worked out.

Adama's holding on to the shower taps as hard as he can, his feet sliding on the floor, apparently unaware of the way he's whimpering. Sam slides his hand from Adama's balls to his shaft, thrusting even deeper, bending over him. And frak, here it is, he's coming, he's coming, and he pulls out suddenly, grunting, and shoots all over Adama's back, feeling more relief than real pleasure. The kid makes a sound of protest, almost a mewl, but as Sam grasps and strokes him, rough, insistent, he starts to shudder, gasping like he's oxygen-deprived as Sam holds him hard. Sam sees his semen spurt against the tile, two, three, four times before Lee goes limp in his arms.

"Zeus and Apollo," Sam swears, letting go of Lee at last and sagging against the wall. The irony of the expression is not lost on him.

"Yeah," Lee says. He straightens up, spots his shorts hanging on the towel rack, and pulls them on, apparently trying not to look at Sam as he dresses himself. Sam retrieves his own soaked clothes, avoiding Lee's eyes and trying to decide how best to proceed. The truth is that he can't hate Lee; it's absurd even to argue about which of them had the right to her, as if Kara had been a thing to be possessed. She had never truly belonged to anyone but herself.

Their furtive glances accidentally meet at some point; Lee actually looks at his feet and flushes, and Sam finds himself fighting to hide a small smile.

"So what about a frakking drink," Sam says finally. There's no doubt in his mind that Kara would have gotten a perverse kind of kick out of this: the two men she'd been torn between being pulled together by her absence. "A couple bottles of ambrosia, some smokes, and no talking. It's the wake she would have wanted. Oh, and a change of clothes." He picks at the wet shirt he's dragged back on. "Unless we wanna drink naked." Is he actually _flirting_ with Lee? Ye gods, he frakking is.

"An honor to her memory," Lee agrees, politely ignoring that last remark. Sam gives him a grateful smile, but it feels tight and painful, like his face might break if he tries any harder. "Let's go get frakked."


End file.
